THE INTERNATIONALIZATION PROCESSES IN PAST TIMES: THE CASE OF CARBONELL, 1866-1917.

Juan Baños

The internationalization processes of familiar business are calling for more research (Pukall and Calabro, 2014). These calls have been highlighted in Spain in recent years (i.e., special issues of Revista de la Historia de la Economía y la Empresa, 2014, Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business, 2016, and, specifically, Fernández Pérez and LLuch, 2016). The paper applies the framework of born-again global firms (Bell et al., 2001; 2002; 2003; Olejnik and Swoboda, 2012); or as Schueffel et al (2014) label, re-born as global firms. These are companies already established in their internal markets and without motivation to go abroad, but which, suddenly, embrace a strategy of quick internationalization always preceded by a "critical incident", being the most common a change in ownership and/or management, and in mergers and acquisitions (Bell et al., 2001, 2003, 2004; Kuivalainen et al, 2012; Olejnik and Swoboda, 2012; Kalinic and Forza 2012; Olejnik, 2014; Nummela et al., 2014). The research setting is the olive oil company Carbonell (Córdoba, Spain) during the years 1866-1917. Carbonell remained among the leading Spanish oil companies. After the death of the founder (Antonio Carbonell Llacer) Carbonell was near to bankruptcy (and so to disappear), but after the interim period that the company was labelled Viuda de Carbonell, it reactivated all its potential under the social name of Carbonell, Sociedad Comanditaria, headed by Carlos Carbonell Morand, founder’s son. The conclusions lead to think that the example is relevant because it is a company away from the pattern of companies of knowledge-intensive, since Carbonell works with a traditional product, almost handmade, as is olive oil (Lubinski et al., 2013). Furthermore, there are a few studies in the period analyzed with the pattern of re.born global firms, so the conclusions derived from it may differ from what is established in the literature.